Clare’s reflections – the first Committee meeting after sabbatical

We had our first Committee meeting since my return and I want to say a huge thank you to the team for holding the space while I have been away and for making some improvements to the way we do things. Operation Thrive is a great new initiative which involves the whole October books team and the Committee in making plans to improve our sales income. More on some of the ideas from the Operation Thrive meetings in my next update.

The Committee meeting was a great opportunity to catch up on all that has been happening whilst I have been away and there are lots of possibilities and opportunities emerging. In addition to the update of the shop and the flooring in the community space, the increase in bulk sales of books to schools has really helped our financial situation. Suzanne has also increased the room hire income with some great new connections as well as maintaining our existing hires. We aren’t quite on an even keel financially though and our draft end of year accounts show a deficit, primarily due to a decrease in book sales in the shop and online and increased costs for nearly all of our services.

Something that I want to pursue on returning to October Books is the use of nature based metaphors to understand what we do as a business and to move us to regenerative ways of thinking and being. We have been using the language of nature for a while, in describing October Books as a tree, with the team as the trunk, our members, customers and community the roots and all that we deliver our branches and leaves (see diagram above). This metaphor is limited though, as I found out when I attended a free workshop with the team at Think Like a Forest when the suggestion was made that our customers and members are other trees in the forest. This thought has made a huge difference to my view of all that we do.

The Think Like a Forest team offer training to develop this thinking and I am really grateful to October Books committee for agreeing to part fund my participation on the course. The Southampton Collective are also funding some of the fees and the Southampton Climate Action network have agreed to cover the remainder. I’ll keep you all updated with progress. I hope that the regenerative way of thinking can become an integral part of Operation Thrive.

So much potential and so many possibilities. These are exciting times.